by Rice, Luanne
“I want you there, you know?” he asked. “But I’m thinking it might be a distraction.”
“A distraction how?” she asked, disappointed.
“See,” he said. “I need to keep my eyes on the puck.”
“I’d stay out of the way,” she said.
“Even so, I’d know you were there.”
“It’s okay. I understand,” she said, sounding hurt.
“You don’t,” he said.
“I promise I do.” Her voice was cool.
During their lunch break, May and Tobin left Aunt Enid with that day’s bride and her mother, taking their sandwiches out to a tree behind the barn. There in the shade, they ate their lunch and listened to a chorus of birds singing in the branches.
“You’re upset,” Tobin said.
“I am. I can’t help it.”
“Because he’s back in Boston and didn’t invite you to watch him play?”
May nodded, staring at her sandwich. “He says he wants me there, but he thinks I might be a distraction. It reminds me of Gordon going on business trips, never wanting me along.”
“Because Gordon wasn’t going on business trips,” Tobin reminded her. “He was going home to his wife.”
“I know,” May said. “Telling me he had deals in Hong Kong and London, when he was actually reconciling with her.”
“Martin’s not lying to you,” Tobin said.
“How do you know?”
“Because you can watch him on TV. You know he’s where he says he is.”
“Then why doesn’t he want me there?”
“Maybe because of what he said—he’s afraid you’ll distract him.”
“I think he knew I was upset on the phone last night.” May stared at the Bridal Barn, shaking her head. “Relationships are so complicated. I’m barely getting started, and I can’t stand myself.”
“Gordon really worked you over.”
“That’s not Martin’s fault.”
“Then tell him the next time you talk. Wish him luck and mean it.”
“I do,” May said miserably.
But Martin didn’t call that day, and she realized she didn’t have a number for him. She watched the game on TV, saw Martin win Game 6 with a blast from the slot high into the cage, electrifying every person in the Fleet Center, shooting them to their feet in a roaring ovation. Nils Jorgensen lunged after him, restrained by his teammates. May saw Martin meet his eyes, and she saw the rage boiling between them.
She wished he would call her, but he didn’t.
In a blue concrete room stinking of sweat, stale cigarette smoke, and smuggled-in alcohol, a crowd of men thronged around the TV, cheering and jeering loudly, in almost equal measure. The Bruins had just taken Game 6. The cell block was built of concrete and steel, so the men’s voices were hollow, crashing echoes. Pucks of sound, the old man thought, slamming against the walls.
“Fucking killer,” one man said, watching Martin Cartier. “He’s one of us, sure as shit.”
“Bruins suck, the Rangers should’ve taken it from them—”
“Harsh, man—Cartier’s boy is harsh.”
“Next time I’ll use a hockey stick, do more damage.”
“Your boy’s a stone killer,” someone said, laughing as he stuck his face directly in front of Serge’s. “You like that, don’t you?”
“I like it fine,” Serge growled.
“He’s a hero, man,” someone else said. “A national fucking hero.”
“No Canadian’s a national hero. This is the USA!”
“He’s gonna cop the Stanley Cup!”
“Hey, old man—whadda you think of that?”
“He’s not gonna cop it tonight,” Serge said roughly, staring at his son’s face on the TV screen. He could almost feel the beautiful, crisp cold rising from the ice. He breathed the frosty air and thought of the north woods. “Don’t count on that which hasn’t happened yet. Get back to me tomorrow.”
Game 7 was about to start, and all around the country, hockey fans were tuned in to the action in Boston, Massachusetts. One hundred miles south in Black Hall, Connecticut, May and Kylie were again watching the TV in May’s bedroom. Violet, the black house cat, lay curled at their feet. With a big wedding on Saturday, May was surrounded by drawings, photos, lists and the menu.
“Why can’t we go?” Kylie asked, frowning. “I want to go to the game. We’re special to him.”
“It’s better to watch from here,” May said. But inside, she was wondering whether they were special to him after all. He hadn’t called in two days. May had been busy with work and Kylie, whose dreams had been bad last night, of tiny mute creatures trying to tell her something, flying around her head like a thousand white moths. May had recorded the details in the diary.
The telephone rang, and May answered, expecting to hear the bride or her mother or the caterer.
“Hello?”
“What are you doing?” Martin asked.
“Watching you,” she answered, gripping the phone as she watched the Bruins starting to skate out. “Why aren’t you on the ice?”
“They’re calling me,” he said. “I just have a minute.”
“Oh—” She was speechless, as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her.
“Tonight,” he said, taking one very deep breath.
“This is it.”
“Are we going to win?” he asked. “We are, aren’t we?”
May laughed nervously, wondering why he was asking her. “Yes,” she said, because she knew that was what he needed to hear. But she didn’t necessarily mean the Stanley Cup.
“You don’t sound sure,” he said.
“Something my mother always said,” May told him, “is that it isn’t whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.” The words were out before she could stop to consider she was saying the old saw to a pro hockey player about to play the national championships.
“I’ve heard that before.” Martin laughed. “I just don’t do it very well.”
“Neither do I,” May admitted. “I was a jerk the other night.”
“Why? Because you wanted to come? I wish you had.”
“You do?”
“Oui.”
“Martin’s going to win,” Kylie chanted. “Martin’s going to win.”
“You’d better get out on the ice.” May could see the team taking practice shots.
“I still have the bottle you gave me.”
“With the rose petals?”
“Ssh.” He laughed. “My teammates might hear.”
“Wouldn’t want that.” May laughed back.
“I love you, May,” he said, stopping her heart.
“Martin,” she said, shocked.
“Just one more thing,” he said, trying to laugh, sounding as if his voice was very dry.
“What’s that?”
“If we do win,” he said, “I’m going to ask you to marry me.”
“Now I know you’re kidding me.”
“You think I’d do that?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she said, incredulous.
“Yes, you do, May Taylor,” he said. “You just don’t want to believe it.”
“You’re standing there at a hockey game,” she whispered.
“What’s the difference where I am?”
May thought of the rose petals, talismans of love, and when she looked at Kylie and saw her daughter staring at her with total intensity, she wondered whether this could possibly be happening.
The camera panned across the crowd: she caught sight of a beautiful blonde holding up a sign: “Cartier Rocks.” Two girls wearing halter tops stood by the ice, shivering and screaming “Martin!” May blinked.
“Okay. Enough. Not over the phone,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Yes,” May said, still staring at the screen, but no longer smiling. At the rink, a bell rang and a blast from an air horn sounded.
But he had already hung up, because suddenly she saw
him on her TV screen, the ruggedly handsome blue-eyed muscle-man. Everyone in the Fleet Center saw him too: They jumped to their feet, cheering. May held her daughter, staring at him. There wasn’t an ounce of excess baggage on his six-foot frame, and she found herself wondering where he’d put the rose petals.
“He means it, Mommy,” Kylie said sleepily.
“Means what?” May asked, glancing quickly down.
“What he said. He wants us to be a family.”
May stared at Kylie. There was no way she could have heard Martin’s end of the conversation. Was it another sort of vision? She reached for the diary, to record Kylie’s words, but then she put the book down. Some visions were too deep to be dissected.
The old man had done it himself, won the Stanley Cup three times, for two different NHL teams, so he watched the game with a certain nostalgia and some definite opinions. Dafoe couldn’t coach worth shit. The old man could read his lips, and the only things Dafoe seemed to say were “concentrate” and “discipline.” What about “shoot”; what about “get the puck to Martin”?
“Shoot,” Serge growled under his breath. “Shoot the damn thing.”
Martin cocked his right arm and gunned straight at the net. Jorgensen blocked the shot. Ray Gardner got the puck, slowing Martin down.
“Give it to Martin, idiot,” Serge said. God, he hated Dafoe’s coaching style. Having coached in the NHL himself, Serge could bet Dafoe was talking out of one side of his mouth, telling Martin to shoot, out of the other telling the team to take their time setting Martin up right. When Martin didn’t need setting up—he just needed feeding.
“Got money on the game?” one of the old-timers asked.
“Shut up,” Serge said.
“Your kid’s old,” someone else put in. “Too old to win the Stanley Cup. He’s about to get his ass kicked.”
“If I were Nils Jorgensen, I’d cut off his balls.”
“What balls?”
“Hey, man, can’t say the Sledgehammer lacks balls. Can’t say that.”
“But he’s old for hockey, man.”
“Seriously, Serge—got money on the game?”
Serge no longer heard them. Crouched over, he just stared at the screen. The voices boomed around him, echoing off the concrete blocks. The prison guards stood nearby, as interested in the game as anyone else. One of them asked Serge if Martin had called him, asking for any pointers. Serge’s lips thinned.
“You hear me?” the guard asked louder. “Did Martin call his daddy?”
Serge narrowed his eyes, focusing on the TV. His heart felt small and hard, dry as a ball of tar in his chest. Martin hadn’t called or visited in a long, long time. That was Serge’s private business, and no one needed to know. The cell block sounded like a raucous locker room, the din ricocheting off the walls. The guard tapped Serge hard on the shoulder, but Serge just stared harder. The old man wondered whether Martin listened to his coach.
“Concentrate,” Dafoe’s lips seemed to say. “Discipline.”
Serge ignored the other world around him, concentrating on the game. The Bruins and Oilers were tied, 1–1.
Martin was skating for his life: that’s how he felt. He had scored one goal, but Jorgensen had managed to block all his other shots. Edmonton had scored again, putting them up 2–1, and Martin could read victory in his enemy’s eyes, all his scars bending into a big smile.
He could hear the Boston fans screaming for a goal. They were throwing things on the ice, and the police were out in force. Looking into the stands, Martin saw signs: the Cartier Curse; Double or Nothing: Cartier Loses. Martin thought of his father, wondered whether he was watching from prison.
God, let me win. The prayer came out of nowhere. He wanted to do it for May, for himself. Martin heard the fans jeering. He thought of all the news stories about his father’s gambling on his own team, throwing the game, letting down the sport. Serge Cartier, the great NHL forward, three-time Stanley Cup winner. CARTIER TURNS GOLD INTO JAIL, one headline had read.
Martin wanted to set the name right. He wanted to prove to his father he could do it, he wanted to prove to the world the Cartier name was still worth something in hockey. Even in the twilight of his career, Martin wanted his father to be proud of him. But then he thought of Natalie, of how his father’s gambling addiction had taken her life, and he heard himself moan.
It came from deep inside himself, and it was so loud the whole stadium heard. Martin sounded like a wild animal. Trying to focus on the goal, Martin took the puck from Ray. The clock ticked. He went charging down the ice, cutting in from the right wing as he neared the cage.
“Shoot!” the crowd yelled.
Shoot, Martin told himself. Jorgensen faced him with hate in his eyes. Shoot, Martin thought. He pictured his mother watching, like Coach said. He saw Natalie’s face. He heard his father’s ratchety, low voice: Shoot. He couldn’t do it. Passing to Ray, he came around again.
The crowd saw his hesitation and started to boo. The fans’ frustration and fury sounded in their yells, the rink resounding with discordant and hostile echoes. The clock ticked faster. Martin steeled himself, catching Ray’s eye. The team was setting him up. “Concentrate!” he heard Coach Dafoe shout.
Martin saw a grizzled man with prison pallor; he heard a little girl crying with fear on a balcony in Toronto. He thought of his mother dead, but instead of seeing her in heaven, he saw her cold in the ground. He pictured May, radiant and alive. Concentration impossible, Martin caught Ray’s pass and aimed it at the goal.
Nils Jorgensen blocked the shot.
The buzzer sounded; the score was 2–1.
Martin’s skating would be clocked at 29.2 MPH; the slap shot at 118.2 MPH. That’s what the record books would have read, immortalizing the moment, if Martin Cartier had won the Stanley Cup for the Boston Bruins.
Except they had lost.
May’s voice hurt from yelling, but suddenly she stopped. Kylie had been jumping wildly on her bed, but now she dropped to her knees as if someone had cut the string holding her up.
“Mommy, he didn’t get it into the net.”
“No, he didn’t,” May said.
“Did they lose?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Oh.” Kylie stared at the screen, her face solemn.
Together they watched the TV, the close-up shots of angry Boston fans firing cups and wadded-up programs onto the ice. The camera showed the jubilant Oilers piling onto Nils Jorgensen, hoisting him into the air and carrying him on their shoulders. Panning across to the Bruins, it showed their faces in shock and anger and disbelief.
When the camera found Martin, his eyes were blank. His face was craggy and weathered, as if he had been playing in the snow and wind instead of under the lights of an indoor stadium. But his blue eyes looked empty; they reminded May of a dog she had known once, kept inside a cage most of the time.
“Oh, Mommy,” Kylie breathed.
“Oh, Martin,” May whispered, tears coming to her eyes.
“Why does he look like that?”
“I think because he wanted to win so much.”
“But you always tell me it’s how you play the game.”
“I know. It is…” May began, and then she stopped. Because there were things about sports and men she didn’t understand, a need to win that she had never really had. Kylie was tired, and she wanted to go to sleep. May read her a story, listening all the while for the telephone.
He’ll call, she thought. He can tell me about what happened, how bad he feels, and I can listen. She thought of the things she would say to him, words to soothe and comfort, to give him hope. In the back of her mind, way back behind Martin’s disappointment over the Bruins’ loss, were his words: that he was going to ask her to marry him.
It wasn’t until an hour later, once Kylie was in bed and the moon had circled around the yellow barn and painted the fields and greenhouse with silver light, that the phone rang.
“They lost,” Tobin said. �
�He must be devastated.”
“He hasn’t called.”
“Guys have to lick their wounds alone,” Tobin told her. “It’s the way of the world.”
“He asked me,” May began, wanting to tell Tobin about what Martin had said. But some things were too private to tell even a best friend. So she bit her lip and let the words trail away.
“He’ll be back,” Tobin said. “Just give him time. When John got passed over for promotion, he went fishing alone for a week. He couldn’t even look me in the eye until he got right with himself.”
“What am I doing, starting something like this?” May asked. She thought of Howard Drogin, how he always called when he said he would, how he never seemed overly disappointed when May said she had other plans.
“You deserve more of a life,” Tobin said, “than planning other women’s weddings and hauling your daughter to psychologists.”
“She’s only had one bad dream since the plane crash,” May said. “Only seen angels once. But tonight she mentioned something Martin said—she couldn’t possibly have heard it—”
“She read your eyes, your expression,” Tobin said. “She does it all the time. Any special power Kylie has—if you want to call it that—comes from her connection with you.”
“We’re so close,” May agreed.
“You’ve had to be,” Tobin reminded her. “You’re both mother and father to her. She adores you. She reads your mind because she knows you so well.”
“I’ll put that in the diary,” May said. “When we head up to Toronto in July, I’ll tell the doctors your theory.”
“Good.”
May laughed. “My notebook isn’t getting fuller these days. I think they might be disappointed. Kylie’s psychic activity has slowed down.”
“Maybe she doesn’t need any imaginary friends right now.”
“Why?”
“Maybe because her mother’s been happier.”
But when she hung up the phone, May didn’t feel very happy at all. The rose petals hadn’t worked, after all. May felt sorry that Martin hadn’t called, but not only for herself, for him: She would have liked to give him comfort.